Broadcasting: a brief overview

The aim of Broadcasting, as a collection of poems, is to honour the residents of five lost villages in the 18,000 acres north of Thetford chosen by the War Office in June 1942 for D-Day training; consequently these villages (and several parishes) were requisitioned by the armed forces and over 1000 residents were given less than twenty days to leave their land and homes. 

The poems are intended to illuminate significant episode in East Anglian history which has nevertheless been almost entirely forgotten by the subsequent two generations. 

From the Introduction to Broadcasting:


The names of villages and the people who had to leave their homes in July 1942 became real to me after my second visit to the Thetford STANTA (Stanford Training Area) military base in May 2012. In a chilly Nissan hut I spent hours staring at black and white photos which had been donated to STANTA by ex-residents; each wall of the room had the name of one of the villages above it: Stanford, West Tofts, Sturston, Tottington, Buckenham Tofts. 

I knew that I would have to write about both real and imaginary villagers who gave up their homes and their land, for what would have been described as ‘the war effort’. So in that cold Nissan hut at STANTA, many of the villagers in photos stuck on the walls began to talk to me...

Broadcasting is published in early May by Gatehouse Press. Signed copies are available: contact Andrea via andrea.holland@uea.ac.uk